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Fukuoka discusses the modern style of dining and preparing food and the way in which it has deviated from a “natural” style of dining. He believes that a natural person can achieve the right diet because they are satisfied with simple food that is nutritious, tasty and useful in daily medicine. He takes issue with a new generation of pretentious diners, which he refers to as “foodies.” Foodies tend to be more concerned with the way in which food is prepared rather than the taste of ingredients in their natural state. He claims, “Modern people have come to think that if they do not prepare food with elaborate seasonings, the meal will be tasteless. If you do not try to make food delicious, you will find that nature has made it so” (Fukuoaka 137). Fukuoka explains that in our effort to make rich luxurious foods, useless foods are made, and it becomes harder to satisfy people’s appetites.

This modern style of dining rose during the time of the Meji period, a time when Japan became its modernization and rose to world power status. After this period not as much of Japanese society relied on farming for economic purposes and as industry boomed more people were spending money on food rather than farming it themselves for consumption. With the increase in popularity of “dining out,” people became more accustomed to luxurious dining and prepared food that was highly saturated with flavor, often times covering up the taste of the ingredients entirely, eliminating the taste that nature gave the food. Though “foodies” love and appreciate the taste of food, just as Fukuoka does, they do not value it’s true taste and that is the issue that Fukuoka discerns in “The One Straw- Revolution.”